"HD turned its marketing in the early ’80s to a toxic stew of machismo and white nationalism dog whistles. It fostered a culture of ugly male entitlement.

And it got a lot of white, middle-aged accountants and lawyers to buy into being weekend assholes, regardless of how careful they were to be useful members of society the rest of the week. The demographic of Harley Davidson riders are proud of having inefficient, incredibly loud and hideously expensive bikes. Wretched excess. Strong overlap with the rolling coal demographic".

The article is very true, and he's right that electric Harley's won't sell.
I commented on this thread http://www.biker.ie/forum/showthread.php?t=244938, and said Harley's are going extinct, and their new bikes won't sell, but it's harley riders that are going extinct. Harley Davidson simply can't find enough arseholes to keep them afloat, and this last-ditch attempt at branching into electric bikes and off-road bikes is just grasping at straws.
Once the fucking eejits sell up because their wives tell them to, the ones who bought a Harley after wanking over a picture of an alpha male character from Sons of Anarchy, that'll be it for Harley. It's all downhill from there.

The article is very true, and he's right that electric Harley's won't sell.
I commented on this thread http://www.biker.ie/forum/showthread.php?t=244938, and said Harley's are going extinct, and their new bikes won't sell, but it's harley riders that are going extinct. Harley Davidson simply can't find enough arseholes to keep them afloat, and this last-ditch attempt at branching into electric bikes and off-road bikes is just grasping at straws.
Once the fucking eejits sell up because their wives tell them to, the ones who bought a Harley after wanking over a picture of an alpha male character from Sons of Anarchy, that'll be it for Harley. It's all downhill from there.

Yeah - could be the beginning of the end.

Daft thing is, they realised this at least 15 years ago when they bought Buell and commissioned Porsche to help them move away from the trad air-cooled lumps with the Revo engine in the VRod - but eventually dropped both because the 'faithful' didn't like them. Sat on their hands and marked time until it's near as damnit too late.

I never said that I disliked them. In fact, they have a special hold over me in some ways because of childhood memories of the sound of a 1200 on approach, start-up and departing due a 50 year family tie to the marque.

There are several I'd like to own, from my uncle's 1970's soft tail (bought new in Oz when he lived there and brought back to Ireland in the early 80's), through to a slick bagger and a custom chopper with a nice stretch, just for the hell of it.